CLASS OF 1899
In another place in the MAGAZINE appear suitable memorials to Walter Andrew Foss, who died in San Francisco on January 20, and Frank Abbott Musgrove, who died in Hanover on February 27.
The annual Boston round-up of '99, held at the University Club the night of Saturday, March 6, was attended by twenty-four men. In their minds were the memories of the two just mentioned, as well as of Bill Atwood, and of George Huckins' and Pap Abbott's boys. Yet the loss of these five from the class ranks did not cast a shadow over the reunion. Rather, it strengthened the sense of comradeship and devotion, just as the close-pulled threads of some finely woven fabric make its pattern lasting and beautiful.
Present were the following: Ed Allen, Jim Barney, K. Beal, Louis Benezet, Nelson Brown, Frank Cavanaugh, George Clark, Hale Dearborn, Charlie Donahue, George Evans, Gus Heywood, Owen Hoban, Joe Hobbs, George Huckins, Warren Kendall, Tim Lynch (with nephews Edmund Burke and Dr. White), Dave Parker, Ernest Silver, Ed Skinner, Fred Walker, Bill Wiggin, and Phil Winchester. During the evening the fellows sent messages to Pitt Drew and Neal Hoskins, who are both still in the slow stages of recovery from long illnesses.
Bill Wiggin was shoved protestingly into the toastmaster's chair. We heard earlier how he had sped down the length of New Hampshire, beating Ernest Silver to a conference with the Governor at Concord. Wig made the class come to attention and speak their individual parts with all the blunt vigor for which his classrooms are famous.
No message of the evening won closer attention than George's account of the funeral ssrvice for Mushy in Rollins Chapel, with our own "Charlie D." Adams' address. Sil, Dave Storrs, Jim Richardson, and Wesley Jordan were at the service too. Donnie's tribute to Bill Atwood was in similar vein, together with his characteristic prophecy that '99's best years are still ahead.
Jim Barney, '99's faithful "wheelhorse" in all troubled matters of detail, read from the sheaf of messages from absentees. Joe Gannon and Warren Robie, adopted '99er, had written; so had Alvah Sleeper, though sick himself. Weary Wardle wrote from Canada, "Keep the '99 candle burning for those gone just as well as for those living." Franko French did not dare to promise to come, and offered to "eat in the kitchen" if he came unexpectedly. Ed Hyatt would have liked to come down just to show the proper Line of March through Vermont in the second edition of Tim Lynch's famous Tours next summer. Tim himself told of his experiences handling the '99 pilgrimage to Maine last August, and said fifteen years in the hotel business and thirteen of married life hadn't prepared him for the troubles his itinerant host made him in three short days. Still Tim was gloriously eager for next season.
Phil Winchester pictured his open fireside in Syracuse, Silver the same in Plymouth, Lute Oakes ditto in Minneapolis. "Tents on the lawn" is Lute's plan to compete with Sil's three hundred dormitory beds at his Normal School. Dave Parker paid tribute to the bond of '99 and quoted Celia Thaxter's "I lit the light in the lighthouse tower." Jim Pringle '97 sent his word of goodwill from New Hampshire, and we sent ours by Phil Winchester back to our old Professor Richardson, now in Syracuse, the chemistry man who liked his cognomen of the "Cheerful Idiot" as well as we ourselves liked the one we gave it to.
The Secretary told of Harry Wason's visitation with Bones Woodward in Seattle while a roomful of patients kicked their heels nervously in Bones' waiting room, and of Walter Eastman's detention in Chicago by the necessity of facing all in one fell swoop the accumulated Cook County taxes for the past four years. Other jovial contacts and echoes he brought us. Lute Oakes' wallet with its dingy coins won at golf from Harry Wason some years ago, Professor Crehore's delicate experiments in photographing the spectrum with a mirror stuck out the window in lower Reed, with Mushy simulating portentous sunspots by dropping ink on the mirror from the thirdstory window (Eddie Skinner conniving).
Bennie was sometimes at the piano, and sometimes Cav. Or Cav was telling a yarn of a favorite quarterback who waved appreciation of the crowd's applause with one hand, and dared Cav's displeasure by catching punts singlehanded with the other. Bennie was never better in his inimitable role of reminiscing than in quoting Jerry's verses on "Wheels," and then in rapid-fire order proving the point to the poem by demonstrating that everybody in '99 was a real individual, and not just "run of the mill." And of Bill Wiggin, toastmaster, who summoned him to his feet with one abrupt, stentorian call of "Benezet!" Bennie said, "The mould was broken when Bill Wiggin was made, our masterpiece of rugged individuality."
Ed Allen modestly, and interestingly, admitted his daring plunge into independent business in the midst of our prize depression; George Evans maintained that same said depression boosted library business fivefold; Fred Walker refused to relieve Wig's sense of personal depression about finding his way through the maze of Worcester streets, and allowed Wig instead to put Eddie Skinner on the spot to explain why he applauded Bill Colbert at al. when they took their daily dozen in the gay nineties throwing college furniture down the antique stairs of Hallgarten.
More emphasis on class individualism followed with the revelation that not only were '99's one hundred or more children beginning to turn the corner into their early thirties, but that at least one, Jane Eaton Wiggin, has arrived for the first time in the 1930's. So likewise Joe JHobbs told of the fun he and Fred Locke had in a special jaunt to Hanover last fall, Fred's first in thirty years, and George Huckins drew an ideal picture of every fellow present coming to the next round-up with at least one absentee in tow. Hale Dearborn and K. Beal pictured how much the unity of the class means to every individual in it, and Spade Heywood summed up in his incisive way as class agent the financial crisis at the College which the Alumni Fund must help meet.
There's more news we should tell, but we've already stolen space from somebody else's column, and the class candle of NinetyNine's Thirty-third Round-up is wavering, flickering, and guttering to its end. So it's lights out, and good night—till tomorrow.
Secretary, 41 West Kirke St., Chevy Chase, Md.
